Official News - page 6

REAL LIFE NEWS: MORE SAT-NAV MADNESS

by Hazed

I've written before about the stupid people who think that sat-nav instructions must be obeyed without question. I guess the ordinary man, woman and thing in the street hasn't yet grasped the fact that computers are not infallible. But you would expect that official uniformed personnel who are supposed to have some sort of training would know better. Wouldn't you?

Apparently not. Two ambulance drivers showed absolute blind faith in their satnav and followed its instructions on and on, resulting in an eight hour, 430 miles trip, on what should have been a thirty minute journey.

The crew in Essex, England, were supposed to be moving a male patient from King George hospital in Ilford to Mascalls Park hospital near Brentwood, which is a 12 mile journey. However, their errant satnav system sent them off course and they ended up in Manchester. They hadn't done the trip before, and hadn't realized they'd gone off course - just followed the satnav blindly without manually confirming where they were. It wasn't until they were called by the ambulance control some four hours later that they admitted they "appeared to be a little lost", by which time they were on the outskirts of Manchester.

Madness!

Incidentally, a test by the consumer group Which? ran a head-to-head trial between satnavs and convential maps and found that using an atlas was the quickest way to navigate. Two people using an atlas reached their destination eight percent faster than those relying on satnav. Sometimes, the technological way is not the best.

Fed2 Star index Previous issues Fed 2 home page